Friday Fun! Blow Up Your Favorite Websites with a Bookmarklet

If you’ve ever played the video game Asteroids, then you’ll be delighted to know that you can bring the destructive joy of this simple game to any website on the internet with a simple JavaScript bookmarklet (ok – the JavaScript isn’t simple, but clicking a bookmarklet is!).

18ish-year-old Swedish developer Erik Andersson has done a remarkable job of recreating the fundamentals of this classic game, giving you the ability to fly a spaceship around websites and blow up text, images, and advertisements.

Yep, just blowing up my own articles...

To use the Asteroids bookmarklet, head to Erik’s Asteroids site and drag the big green button to your bookmarks toolbar, where you then can use it on any site you like. To use Asteroids, just visit a website and click the bookmarklet once – you can then use the arrow keys to steer (forward is thrusters), shoot missiles with the Space bar, and hold B to identify targets on the website. Your score is kept in the bottom right corner of the browser window.

Target acquired.

Instead of telling you any more about this awesome game, how about I give you some target practice? And remember, as the developer says, “It’s cooler if you make your own sound effects.“.